Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, two of Mexico’s most bankable movie stars, launched the fourth annual Ambulante documentary film festival Friday morning in a packed cinema screening room on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma.
Lydia Cacho’s celebrity was apparent from the get-go last Thursday night in the trendy Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City, where the journalist launched her new book “Not With My Child” (Con Mi Hij@ No).
A group of Honduran men and women came to Mexico looking for their missing loved ones earlier this year. They claim that there are nearly 600 Honduran migrants who are missing in Mexico who disappeared whilst crossing Mexico to get to the United States.
You see some strong stuff on the streets of Mexico City ans this month was no different: an advertising campaign from Mexico’s Green Party demanding the return of the death penalty to the country.
Immigration, women’s rights, illegal detention and human trafficking are some of the themes that will be examined next week during Mexico’s first human rights film festival.
A campaign featuring well-known men in Mexico asks that their fellow males stop beating up and abusing women. Do Mexican men need to be told by other Mexican men to stop beating up and abusing women?
A television, radio and print advertising campaign is to launch here in Mexico in an attempt by press freedom groups to raise public awareness about violence against journalists.
Still on the doggy theme of last week, a documentary screening in Mexico City over the weekend focused on how Mexico deals with the thousands of stray dogs roaming its streets. And no, it did not paint a pretty picture.
Mexico’s National Commission of Human Rights appealed to authorities over the weekend to investigate thoroughly the recent killings of a number of journalists here, and to put an end to the impunity for those who murder members of the profession.
Reporters Without Borders issued an appeal to the international community today to provide asylum for journalists fleeing Mexican cities such a Ciudad Juarez.
Jorge Luis Aguirre, director of the news website “La Polaka,” has fled Mexico with his family to the United States after receiving death threats in his home city of Ciudad Juárez, in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.
Guerrilla-knitter Magda Sayeg of KnittaPlease.com hit the streets of Mexico City to take on her biggest challenge yet. It was her task to cover an entire bus with knitting, as is her style, and we caught up with her just as she was completing her task.
Reports are surfacing this morning that the offices of the Culiacán newspaper El Debate were attacked with two grenades early Monday.
Veteran Mexican crime reporter Armando Rodríguez was shot to death yesterday morning while in his car in the border city of Ciudad Juárez.
November 6 2008 – Mexicans don’t have much faith in the word of their government. The natural reaction of many here in Mexico following a plane crash last week that killed Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño has been suspicion.
Activists and rights groups marched in remembrance of Brad Will yesterday in the state of Oaxaca, marking the second anniversary of the fatal shooting of the U.S videographer.
Traffic, protesters and street vendors are some of the biggest daily headaches for Mexico City mayor Marcelo Ebrard.
Two members of the protest movement that activist and videographer Brad Will was covering when he was shot dead more than two years ago have been arrested in connection with his murder.
Lilia Alejandra is one of the 370 women who have disappeared in Mexico’s Chihuahua state since 1993. Her story is the main focus of Bajo Juárez, a documentary film that was five years in the making and opened here in Mexico this weekend.
Thousands of Mexicans took to the streets yesterday to demand justice for the victims of a mass-killing by Government troops on the night of October 2nd forty years ago. But the protests in Mexico City had a bitter end.
Hundreds of students and other Mexicans congregated on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma, Thursday at 3pm, to march in memory of the hundreds who died that night 40 years ago.
Today, people of all ages will march in memory of a massacre that took place forty years ago in Mexico City – an event that remains one of the darkest in the country’s recent and bloody history.
Two explosions during Mexican Independence Day celebrations in the western state of Michoacan killed eight people Monday night and injured dozens more, we reported yesterday.
The New York Times has a great piece online today about how just regular citizens are reacting to the drug war.
A girl wielded a photo of Monica Alejandrina, who was kidnapped in 2004, during this Saturday’s march for peace across Mexico.
Tens of thousands of people of all social classes and ages marched across Mexico Saturday (August 30th 2008) in protest against high crime levels and rising kidnappings.
Following the detention of Brian Conley, founder of Alive in Baghdad, and some of his colleagues on August 21st in Beijing, news emerged today that he and his companions have been released and are expected to arrive in Los Angeles on Monday morning.
Brian Conley, who runs the award-winning video blog Alive in Baghdad, has been detained in Beijing whilst documenting pro-Tibet protests in the city running alongside the Olypmics.
Last week’s condemnation of the mini-skirt by the Mexican Catholic Church has enraged some Mexican women, who say that church’s statement that women should wear less provocative clothing makes it easier to justify rape and other forms of violence against them.
A Mexican university has banned miniskirts and other “provocative clothing” in an effort to stop “provoking” violent attacks against women.
On Tuesday, I waited for a man to die. Even though several people die every minute of every day, I’ve never known the name of the person that I knew was going to die; neither have I ever known so closely when they were going to die and how. But yesterday I knew.
The man’s name was Jose Ernesto Medellin, and now he is dead. On Tuesday, he was due to die at 6pm at the hands of the Texan government for the brutal rape and murder of two teenage girls in 1993.
An estimated 2,934 children ages 14 and younger have HIV/AIDS in Mexico, according to Mexico’s national center for the Control and Prevention of Aids (CENSIDA) (link to PDF). Those are just the cases that have been detected, and there is a lack of reliable statistics on the issue.
“TJ? Really?” was the response from most people last week when they learned I was heading down south of San Diego for a research trip.
They were right to be cautious. I live in Mexico City — one of the biggest, baddest towns around — but still gave Tijuana a second thought. The world’s most famous border city has been getting some bad press of late due to the drug-related violence playing out on its streets.
But what struck me more during my brief trip was the border itself and how it is littered with evidence of its own casualties and conflicts, past and present. The wall is at the center of the current national debate on immigration, and I wanted to see it for myself.
President Calderon on Friday welcomed the U.S. Congress’ approval of the Merida Initiative a day earlier, an aid injection from the United States which is aimed at helping Mexico in its fight against powerful drug cartels.
The bill has dropped a controversial requirement that Mexico meet certain human rights standards in order to receive the aid. Mexicans had objected to the human rights provision, saying that it amounted to outside meddling by the United States in Mexican affairs. But dropping the human rights requirements seems certain to anger numerous opposition groups to the aid package – see this La Plaza post on the issue.
In anticipation of the scheduled debate around the controversial Merida Initiative aid package in the US Senate this week, the Financial Times newspaper from the UK urges President Felipe Calderon to accept the human rights conditions attached to the US$400 billion injection aimed at helping Mexico fights its drugs barons. But should he?
Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico have been strong on promoting human rights internationally and in supporting the UN human rights machinery during 2007.
But unless the gap between their policies internationally and their performance at home is closed their credibility as human rights champions will be challenged, according to this week’s report from Amnesty International on human rights around the world.
You can access the report here and click on the links at the top for specific country reports.
Last Thursday, Colombian popstar Shakira got a group of Latin American stars and businessmen together in the Mexican capital to launch ALAS (meaning “WINGS”), a Latin American initiative aimed at aiding the development of young children in the region.
Shakira, who recently got together with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, has been running her own foundation to help the poor since she was 18.
A good friend of mine, Juan, was denied a tourist visa to the United States this week. It’s technically known as a B-2 visa. Juan’s girlfriend is from the U.S, and he wanted to travel with her to her home state later this year to attend her sister’s wedding and to meet her parents for the first time.
A home-owner (he bought the house thanks to a finance scheme through the Government) and Mexico City Government employee for the last five years, he did things the way that the United States want Mexicans who want to come to the U.S to do things.
Warrants for the arrest of five public employees involved in the illegal detention of journalist Lydia Cacho (pictured) have been issued in Mexico after the nation’s Supreme Court decided at the end of last year not to pursue legal proceedings against those involved in the case.
April is shaping up to be a bad month for journalists in Mexico.
Univision: Young angels in Juarez battle the city’s demons
AFP: Mexico City struggles with waste disposal
AFP: Activists under fire in Mexico
AFP: Ambulance attacked in Ciudad Juarez
Time: Evidence of Killings and Disappearances by Mexico’s Security Forces
AFP: Mexicans honor drug war victims on Day of the Dead